‘Max Steel’ Movie is Not for Kids, According to New PG-13 Rating

Max Steel is the superhero movie that nobody was clamoring for or even expected, and yet, here it is, coming to the multiplex this October. Unfortunately, the film isn’t getting the kid-friendly PG rating Open Road was hoping for, and has instead been slapped with a hard PG-13.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Classification and Ratings Administration kept the PG-13 rating after a hearing on Wednesday when Open Road appealed that the organization bring it down to PG. A PG rating would have expanded the movie to a wider and younger audience, which would at least have guaranteed a passable opening weekend, but because of “some sci-fi action violence” the MPAA decided Max Steel wouldn’t be right for the kids. Max Steel is about a teen who finds out he has energy-bending superpowers courtesy of his scientist father and teams up with a friendly talking robot to save the world, so the fact that there’s some fighting in the movie isn’t surprising, but live-action violence has a slightly different flavor than cartoon punching and kicking.

If you have, by chance, seen the documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, or been to any standard action flick in the past few years and come out of it wondering, “Why the heck was that rated R?” you’re probably aware that the MPAA’s movie rating system is, in a word, wack. A little bit of violence is allowed in PG movies, so this means that the action in Max Steel is more than a little bit, but not bloody enough for an R. It begs the question: who is this movie for, exactly? Disney XD is airing a reboot of the original early-2000s cartoon series, but if Open Road was hoping to appeal to current viewers, it looks like they’ve lost that opportunity for any audience members under middle-school age.